According to one of the most popular conspiracy theories of the rock and roll era, Paul McCartney of the Beatles died tragically in a car accident on November 9, 1966. According to the story, the band was able to cover up McCartney’s death by hiring a look-alike who resembled their dead band-mate in looks, sound, and temperament. Allegedly, the truth eventually began to eat away at the Beatles, and in 1969 rumors of the switch broke as numerous clues emerged in the Beatles’ lyrics, recordings, and album covers. Conspiracy theorists believe that the Sir Paul McCartney who is alive as of this writing—one of two remaining Beatles, who subsequently has been wildly successful, first with that international pop sensation, then with Wings, and finally in his solo career—is little more than a talented rank impostor. Debunkers describe this belief as one of the most highly successful, abiding, and profitable ruses of all time.
During the autumn of 1969, a Detroit DJ and a reporter for the Michigan Daily both helped to break a supposed “conspiracy of silence” surrounding the purported death and replacement of McCartney. The story soon took on a vibrant life of its own and continues to thrive today, especially on the Internet. Among the many “clues” supposed to point to this cover-up, classic examples include lyrics such as “he blew his mind out in a car,” as well as messages one can hear by playing the record backwards, such as “Paul is dead, miss him, miss him.” The song “Strawberry Fields Forever” is even said to have contained a sotto voce tribute to Paul in the form of John Lennon’s mumbled phrase at the end, best heard by slowing down the record and translated by true believers as: “I buried Paul.” Even the cover to the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album has been interpreted as depicting a graveside floral display. The album cover that is most closely associated with this story, however, is Abbey Road. Here Paul is clearly and literally out of step with the others, and he has often been described as a barefoot walking-dead corpse in a dark suit, preceded by a Jesus-like, white-suited John and a funereal black-suited Ringo, and followed by a jeans-clad, grave-digger George. Finally, the White Album contains “Revolution 9,” which is thought to say “turn me on, dead man,” when played backwards.
British Invasion
Transforming rock and roll through the development of new manifestations of pop music, which had their roots in American blues, folk, and country, but which were heavily influenced by British musical traditions, the British Invasion refers to the wild success in America of groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and many, many others. Born in large measure in the musical crucible that was the Liverpool of the late 1950s and early 1960s, British “beat” groups, most notably the Beatles, launched what is sometimes called the “Merseybeat” style of music—so named for the River Mersey, along which Liverpool stands—in the early 1960s, taking the United States by storm in the first wave of the British Invasion led by the Beatles in 1964. The music of the many influential British bands of the next decade provided much of the soundtrack for—and in some part both generated and cultivated—the countercultural social revolution that swept America in the ensuing decade.
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The very real murder of John Lennon some years later makes this whole theory seem still more tawdry and petty than ever before, even as it underscores how the cult of celebrity flirts with a morbid curiosity never far beneath the surface of our collective fascination with popular icons. Moreover, the “live fast and die young” ethos of rock and roll helped the story of Paul’s death develop a life of its own. Indeed, the early deaths by excess of rock stars such as Jimi Hendrix (d. 1970), Jim Morrison (d. 1971), and Janis Joplin (d. 1970), in tandem with tragic accidents such as the plane crash in 1959 that killed Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and Buddy Holly—not to mention crashes that decimated bands like the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd—helped both to fuel the Paul-is-dead rumors and to explain the place of such morbid fascination in the popular American imagination. Such victims of wanton self-indulgence and tragic accident alike are enshrined in the pantheon of rock martyrs. Rock Gods never die, such folklore whispers, rather they are forever fixed in the firmament of the pop heavens. In the words of the popular 1985 Commodores song of the same title, which laments the untimely deaths of R&B legends Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, such fallen heroes now sing on the “Nightshift.”
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See also Conspiracy Theories; Kennedy, John F., Assassination of; Lennon, John, Shooting of; Lincoln, Abraham, Assassination of; Monroe, Marilyn, Death of
Further Reading
Harrington, Richard. 1994. “Long Live Paul-Is-Dead; New Book Chronicles the History of the Hoax.” Washington Post, March 9.
Is Paul Dead? Website. http://www.ispauldead.com/. Accessed September 15, 2015.
Reeve, Andru J. 1994. Turn Me On, Dead Man: The Complete Story of the Paul McCartney Death Hoax. Ann Arbor, MI: Popular Culture, Ink.
Warren, James. 1997. “Dead Paul Hoax Is Still the Grandest of Illusions.” Chicago Tribune. January 22. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860871_1860876_1860997,00.html. Accessed September 15, 2015.